Author Archives: Cas

I’m an internet statistic

I can’t find the source right now, but I did read somewhere recently that 38% of women have a secret crush on someone at work. Damn it. I finally have to admit that just once in my life, I’m following the herd. Right now I’m going to do something about it and tell everyone. Yes, I know that by plastering it over the internet it is no longer secret, but so what? The internet has played a significant part of my life so far, so why not now? Plus, by sharing it’s no longer secret, so I stop being a wooly sheep and become the kooky individual you all know and love once more.

I shall take a moment before we go any further to clarify the lingo that are used here on Bright Meadow; RLO stands for “Random Lust Object”. RLO’s by definition are random. You never know when they are going to appear and brighten up your day. By the same definition, RLO’s can never go beyond a mild “ooh, he’s rather pretty to look at…” because they never around long enough to even contemplate anything more. RLO’s are on a par with movie stars (only normally more, well, normal looking) in how they affect your daily life.

EDLO’s are where it starts to get a little sticky.

EDLO’s are “Every Day Lust Objects”. It’s all in the name.

There are degrees of crush which range from “wouldn’t push you out of the bed in the morning” all the way through to “I want to have your babies”. I am, and I must reassure all concerned here, nearer to option one than to option two but still… The presence of an EDLO makes work better and worse all at the same time. Better because it’s always nice to have something nice to look at. Worse because there really are times that a “nice personality” and a “cute hiccup” just aren’t enough to compete with leggy, blonde freshers. C’est la vie. C’est MY vie.

It’s one thing to flirt mildly with an RLO because – hello, random! When you have the self esteem of a battered slug * it’s quite another to even engage an EDLO in normal conversation. Plus I’m about as transparent as cling-film or something else that is very transparent. Glass maybe? Just once in my life I’d like to be enigmatic. Channel some of that Audrey Hepburn nonchalance.

Neh, I’m not thin enough to pull off Audrey Hepburn. But you know what I’m shooting at, right?

I know exactly what I’m doing here. I’m shooting for the moon because I know it will never happen. It’s so much easier to talk about the life I would like to live rather than to actually live the life. And as I’ve said a time or three, it’s nice to look and to dream 😉

So yes, I’ve been cursed/blessed with an EDLO at work. It makes for great conversations down the pub of an evening – all my friends berating me (yet again) and telling me what I should be doing, me trotting out all the same tired old excuses I’ve been trotting out for the past decade. It makes for great blogging material. It makes for damn hard wardrobe choices in the morning.

I shall end this by asking the following: why the frack do I always look my absolute worst when he walks in in the morning looking absolutely scrumptious in those battered jeans?

Just asking.

* Why a battered slug? No reason, I just think that a battered slug would have low self esteem.

Sunday Roast: nothing says relax like handcuffs

Once again, I wouldn’t trouble yourselves looking for the provenance of the roast title. This one is a pure Cas-classic. We’ve been on a bit of a Battlestar Galactica binge lately at Meadow Towers – I got season 3 for my birthday, and because it had been six months since we’d last watched season 2, Moose and I decided to go back and refresh our memories before starting on the good stuff (and it is very, very good). In one of the episodes, they show the Cylon resurrection. With one model, she wakes up in a bath of goo and all her Cylon friends are around the edge, reassuring her (it turns out that being reborn is a little traumatic). And then they show the resurrection of a different model. Again, a naked woman wakes up in a bath of goo with all her Cylon friends around the edge, murmuring nice things at her, ‘telling her it will be OK’, and then camera pans back to show that this particular Cylon has been handcuffed to the sides of the bath…

Which prompted me to go “because of course, nothing says relax like handcuffs!” Moose looked at me, I looked at Moose, and we both went “Roast title!”

So there you have it.

How has this week gone? Slowly is the only word for it. It has felt like a whole week of Fridays – hard work, tiring, and never ending. Bleck. There are times I could cheerfully knock hit certain people at work upside the head with a frying pan. Grrr. But enough of that. The week has ended well with a supreme dinner party here at Meadow Towers – luckily for me, Moose is a lovely person and a damn good cook so I got a delicious birthday meal I didn’t have to do anything for other than buy the wine and cut up the bread and make the salad. And invite people. Plus I got lots of penguin goodies so all in all, this week wasn’t too bad.

I’m not sure if the non-UK readers are going to get this story, but it tickled me pink, so here it is for all you marmite loving/hating Paddington fans out there: Paddington bear still eats marmalade. The advert is sheer genius, even though it does mess with a childhood favourite.

A man was recently refused alcohol because he refused to prove he was over 21. He was 72. There really is nothing I can add to that story to make it any better.

General Sir Richard Dannatt is growing concerned about the gulf between the army and the nation in the UK. I personally have a very ambivalent attitude to the armed forces. Members of my family have served for years (my uncle is one year shy of his half century in the TAs and has served in both Iraq conflicts, Afghanistan twice, the Balkans, and sundry other conflicts) and I am intensely proud of the work they have done. On the other hand, I find violence abhorent and vehemently disagree with armed conflict of any kind. But back to the article – what got me wasn’t the stated treatment of returning soldiers at the hands of the general public. It was the quote from the general saying “we still have a nation that, at times, seems immune to homeless and psychologically-damaged soldiers”.
Surely that is more of a stunning indictment of the armed forces that they demob soldiers without the support of finding them housing or psychological support, than that the nation is at fault?

ProBlogger recently took a poll of how long people had been blogging. The results can be seen here. What I find interesting is the really sharp drop at 3-4 years. Seemingly, that’s the make/break point for serious bloggers. Survive that year and you’re set. *counts back on Bright Meadow* Um, this could be an interesting year 😉

Where do you stand on Smilies? Nils isn’t a fan. He does make a good point – they are ugly and far too prone to misinterpretation. But I am guilty of using them incessantly. I blame my early introduction to MSN. The conversations were fast and, between the group of us, we rapidly developed a shorthand that made full use of smilies. In the context of the IM, the people I was speaking to knew that when I typed o_O I was raising an eyebrow to signal my skepticism. Just as *plink* and *chocolate orange* became shorthand for certain in-jokes, a 😉 at the end of a sentence took the sting out of heavy British sarcasm and loving irreverence our American friends had troubles translating. Somehow I just never got rid of the use of smilies – they are part of my digital lexicon. I do try to be sparing with them, but even now there are people I speak to online with whom I can have entire conversations in L33T and emoticons. But just for you Nils, I try and keep them from littering Bright Meadow too much.

The XKCD comic is really tickling my fancy at the moment – I think the ones I like best are the ones like this one where I genuinely don’t get the joke till the last frame. Genius.

And on that note, I am going to nurse my not-quite-hangover and watch more BSG:3 Thank any god you care to mention that Apollo is no longer wearing that fat suit!

And now I’m 25

I turned twenty five yesterday. Eek. Twenty Five years I’ve been walking this here earth. In one way it seems like a scary large number – quarter of the way through a century and all that. In another way, it feels like barely any time at all. Inside, I don’t feel like I think a twenty five year old should feel, you know what I mean? I’m not all grown-up and responsible. I’m pretty much still living like I did when I was a student (good times 😉 )

I don’t have a ‘significant other’, though that’s not for want of dreaming
I don’t have any dependents; I can’t even keep a goldfish alive!
I don’t have any major assets to my name; no house, no car, no secret hoard of cash
I don’t have a high-flying career
I don’t, if I’m truthful, have much of a life plan other than “London + Publishing ( + dare I say it? Penguin) = Happy Cas” and hell if have any ideas of how to get that plan to reality.

I do, however, have a life I’m enjoying living. That’s actually something I wasn’t sure I’d find a few years back. Most days I go around with a smile on my face from ear to ear, joy in my soul, and knowing that I honestly wouldn’t change a thing about my life as it stands right now. I haven’t got it all sorted out (see the previous paragraph!) but that’s cool with me. Things have a way of sorting themselves out and I’m having good times watching them unfold. So go me and roll on whatever this year has to offer 🙂

But that’s enough about what I think about being twenty five. It’s time you all had a say. I’ve been writing here at Bright Meadow for a good while now, and over the years I’ve shared a fair few things with you, my dear readers. But I’m sure there’s questions you want to ask and things you wish you knew.

Here’s your chance.
I’ll answer the first twenty five questions that get sent in to me, regardless of what they are.

What do you have to do? Simply email me your questions to cas.brightmeadow[at]gmail.com and wait for the post that will follow.

A caveat:
You can ask as many questions as you like. However, if I end up with more than twenty five questions, (no, I have no contingency plan for if I get LESS than 25 questions!) I will take the best question(s) from each person so as many as possible get one of their burning queries answered.

And that’s it. Now it’s over to you to think of the best/most zany questions you can think of. Try to make it something that hasn’t already been talked about. Also please bear in mind that my father, occasionally my brother, and even my boss read the site. I’m all for public humiliation, but let’s try and keep it vaguely decent, please? (Or if not, be prepared for me to fudge my replies some 😉 )

So bring it on!

Sunday Roast: don’t get a gig on

As you’re never going to guess where this week’s title has come from, I’ll tell you now to spare you the misery: it is courtesy of a particularly fine example of the Chav-sub-section of humanity who sat behind us on the bus on Friday morning. I’m not sure of the direct translation, but I suspect from the context she was telling her friend not to get stressed out about a particular situation she found herself in. I do so love traveling by bus – you get to overhear some truly amazing conversations!

I’m writing this whilst Moose has banned me from the kitchen (and consequently the living room as well – damn open plan!) I shouldn’t really complain about this ban as it’s due to birthday cake creation (yum!) but… Well, you know when you’re told you can’t do something you instantly want to do it? Yup. Anyone would think I was 2 tomorrow, not 25.

But this is a perfect opportunity to write the Roast without distraction of the TV, so write the Roast I will (here’s hoping I can get it in before the F1 starts…)

Hamlet has long been my favourite Shakespeare play (of the dramas. I’ve got a soft spot for Taming of the Shrew from the comedies). I’m not sure why, but I just like it. One of my ambitions has always been to watch Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). If I could see it at the Globe, even better. So when it was announced they are putting it on again, I was over the moon. And then I read that my favourite actor, David Tennant will play Hamlet and my cup runneth over. Now I’ve just got to score some tickets…

The pint survives. Kind of.

I’ll agree with this scientists who feel the UK must have a human space role.

The BBC is to televise the Super Bowl. My question is why? We have football (soccer) which demands more skill – even I can see that. And let’s face it, all American Football is is Rugby for wooses. I mean, what’s with all that padding?!

Google has recently called for coherent web privacy laws. I’m thinking back a little while and struggling not to go “pot, say hello to mr. kettle”. They do have a point though.

The Archbishop has called for the Monarch to remain defender of THE faith, not defender of faith. I’m a closet monarchist at heart. I love that we have a queen which, theoretically at least, limits the potential god-like power of the American presidential model we seem to have been going down the line of lately. I also like the history and the pomp and stuff. It gives an identity to the nation. However, I do *not* like that the monarch is ‘defender of the faith’ that is not my faith and is not the faith of a significant number of people who are also British. For once Prince Charles seems to be talking sense when he wants to become defender of Faith in general. Because how can having the monarch just defend one faith actually be less divisive, as the archbishop claims? Also, what’s with his attack on extra-curricular activities?! The main reason parents put their children INTO these programs, which include learning a musical instrument, sport, or a foreign language, are because those are the very classes schools themselves no longer teach. Grrr.

A lady on Hong Kong has brutally attacked a python in defense of her pet dog. Yes, congratulations to the woman for saving her pet and, as she points out, small children are potentially at danger from evil snakes, but… I just can’t get the image out of my head of some Paris Hilton look-alike ineffectually kicking a python with her stillettos in defense of her rat-sized dog…

Here are lots of pictures of gorgeous libraries. No reason, they’re just nice to look at.

Look after your Introvert and they will look after you.

Run! It’s an Alien Fish! Nooooooo…

Got yourself Google Earth? Well, now you’ve got yourself a flight simulator (thanks to the Crazy Canal Man for this one).

“It still shocks me that the term “career woman” exists, with no counterpart for men; being ambitious with one’s work or not pursuing romance still has a stigma attached if you are female.”

As a Mac user, I frequently crow with unholy glee over my PC user friends who don’t have the great freeware that us Mac people use. So, for all you poor Windows-Slaves out there, here’s ten pieces of software you don’t have to pay for, but that do a damn-good job. Got anything else to add to the list? Drop into the comments and share 🙂

Look! It’s everyone’s favourite digital publisher talking about e-publishing and e-books on Radio 4. A few good points get made in the piece, not particularly one closing statement that says (I paraphrase) “e-books and digital publishing currently take the worst parts of the book world and the worst parts of the digital world and smash them together. Till we reverse that, people aren’t going to use them”. I did want to hammer one of the participants over the head with a hardback copy of War and Peace everytime he talked about “leveraging the Community”, but other than that, it’s a great 13 minutes of radio.

Masters of Media has a great preci of Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur” which I’ve previously mentioned in a Roast – the dark side of web 2.0

We’ve had pretty libraries this week, so why not 7 big holes? (Thanks Moose)

And now we end, as all the best Roasts do, with a movie trailer: Iron Man. *shiver* Looks good 😀

Robots In Disguise

Optimus Prime!

I think it is time I told you the tale of me and Optimus Prime. Mother Dearest is convinced that I made this story up to guilt the Crazy Canalman into buying me the above model robot. I didn’t. The following is a true recounting of events as remembered by three year old me.

To fully appreciate the story I am about to tell you, I think it helps if you understand the dynamic of my family. I’ve said it before and I expect I will say it again: my family are more than a little screwball. I think all families are more than a little odd to outsiders, but put my odd against your odd, and I’m pretty certain I’ve got the script for a good drama (or comedy). And I love it. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my gloriously wonderful family. But, as I pointed out, we are a little strange. And strange doesn’t always lead to a quiet life. My brother is three years older than me and for once Chinese astrology has it right when they say a three year gap is the worst for opposing birth signs. My Dog and his Sheep… cat and dog had nothing on us growing up. Everything he did, I had to do bigger and better (and usually failed at). At the same time, he was my big brother and I worshipped him, even when he planted me in the vegetable patch to make me grow taller!

So when he got sick with tonsillitis on his seventh birthday, it was a big thing. Even though I was just three at the time, I remember that he wasn’t there and that Mum and Dad were worried.

I also have very vivid memories of being dragged around what felt like every single toy store in the South of England trying to find a fracking Optimus Prime robot. This was at the peak of the Transformers craze so, like every craze in the known universe, these toys were hard to find. Brother Dearest, like pretty much every other seven year old boy at this time wanted a Transformers toy. Mum and Dad wanted to make him feel better because he was in hospital over his birthday…

Poor little me had to go along on the shopping trip.

Mum claims there is no way I can remember all of this. I can. Going into a gazillion toy stores and not getting anything yourself has a tendency to stick in your brain when you’re a kid. We found the Optimus Prime toy eventually. I want to say in the ten thousandth store – it was probably more like the fifth or sixth. And Brother Dearest got his second birthday wish (his first being not to have his tonsils out – sadly, the doctors didn’t let him have his way on that one).

What did I get?

Zip. Nada. Not even the jelly left on Brother Dearest’s dinner tray, because I am allergic 🙁

Yes. Feel sorry for me!

To make matters worse – I never got to play with Optimus Prime. The most I got was to sit quietly in the corner whilst Brother Dearest transformed him into a juggernaut and back into a robot.

The memory stuck with me, as you might have gathered.

Fast forward twenty two years. It is the summer of Transformers once more and I was having a chat with the Crazy Canalman down the pub one lunchtime and out pours the whole sorry saga. (Moose, on hearing it I might add, had hysterics she found it so funny). I thought nothing of it, other than as a funny childhood memory. I have very few memories of when I was really young courtesy, I think, of putting my head through the caravan step when I was three – so it’s surprising how vivid this one memory is.

The Crazy Canalman, it turns out, was stricken with guilt that he so neglected his youngest child. A few weeks later I am the proud owner of an Optimus Prime robot all of my very own (and my mother is looking at the credit card bill in disbelief, but that’s another story). I love my Optimus Prime. Not because he can transform into a juggernaut and back, though he can (or so the instructions reliably inform me – after an hour both Moose and myself gave up. Clearly we’re far too intelligent). Not because he spouts out five different phrases from his stand, though he does. And not because he has opposable fingers, though he does. But because he’s mine and I have one when my brother no longer does. His went to charity an age ago – mine is sitting in my living room right now. And when Brother Dearest comes to visit and asks to play with it (because he will, nostalgia is a powerful thing), I can say no and make HIM sit quietly whilst I (attempt) to turn it into a juggernaut and back.

I’m sorry parents of siblings out there – sibling rivalry never dies. We just get more petty as we get older and can afford more expensive toys of our own.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to play with my Optimus Prime some more. He has three different sorts of weapons and the Matrix of Leadership… I know I am 25 in a week, but I think it’s healthy to be in touch with your inner child geek 😉

Sunday Roast: smile. It’s September

So what to say about this week? Well, I made it into work on Tuesday (woo hoo!), watched Knocked Up on Wednesday (enjoyable), assembled flat-pack furniture on Thursday, enhanced my leadership skills with three hours of e-learning on Friday, vegged around Meadow Towers on Saturday and wrote the Roast/did laundry on Sunday.

Not, all things considered, the most riveting of weeks, but then it can’t all be bungee-jumping off Tower Bridge and single-handedly white water rafting down the Congo. I am rejuvenated after last weeks unfortunate food poisoning incident and am ready to face the horrors my 25th birthday might have in store for me next week, that’s the important thing.

For some reason, the roastable material this week hasn’t been very forthcoming. Either I’m getting harder to please in my old age, or teh interweb is getting boring. Either way, enjoy what we (Moose normally contributes a good couple of links each week, and today is no different) have found for you.

The Eurostar can now make it from Paris to London in just over two hours. So I can get to another country by train faster than I can get back to the Homestead by train. That’s just not right!

A senior judge has called for the whole population and every UK visitor to go on a national DNA database. I can’t quite write a coherent argument as it’s just 10.30 and I only have one cup of tea under my belt, but the spidy senses are tingling more than a little. It’s also made me realise that I know more about civil liberties, privacy and legal rights in the States than I do in my own country (courtesy of too much CSI, NCIS, West Wing und so weiter). Something I should probably rectify before I start spouting off because I know there are significant differences!

Preston gets a Wallace and Gromit statue. Southampton gets laser lights. I live in the wrong city!

There is no substitute for sheer stupidity in this world.

Are you going Pink for October? Bright Meadow will be (though I will try to make it slightly less garish than last years eye-burning effort!)

And lastly, Facebook has announced that they are rolling out a limited public search on profiles. I’m not sure what my own feelings toward this are – a fairly typical blend of a knee-jerk “oh no, my privacy!” and “cool, more people will be able to find me” – and I haven’t had time to sort through all the possible implications in my brain, so I am going to do what I normally do in these situations: throw you in the direction of other informed discussion on the matter.

And then I am going to prod you in this direction for some thoughts on our tendency to go a little ga-ga and over the top about things.

And lastly, I shall end it all with a movie trailer for
Fierce People, the only one that’s caught my eye this week.

Now I’m off to watch a bit of the grand prix. Anything rather than hoover the flat as I have to do before the inspection tomorrow!

Sunday Toast

For those of you who haven’t been following my adventures on Tumbleweeds (and why not?), I am back in the country and I am recovering from what was almost certainly a short, swift, but definitely NOT very sweet bout of food poisoning. I want to blame some suspect fresh pasta Moose handed me on Thursday when I had nothing in the larder that tempted me for dinner. She wants to pin the blame on a dodgy Slimfast or some bug I picked up in Guernsey. Whatever the trigger, I’ve been lying round Meadow Towers, groaning pathetically for the past four days with just about enough energy to crawl to the sofa and watch episodes of Firefly all day, before crawling back to bed. Seriously! It takes more energy than you’d think to have a shower and wash and blow dry your hair. For the super-curious and to reassure those of you worried about my personal hygiene, the latter all have been taken care of. Slowly, and with many sit-downs to stave off fainting fits and embarrassing trips to A&E (you cracked your head open in the bathtub and then half-strangled yourself with the hairdryer cord how again, exactly?)

The diverse symptoms of possible food poisoning I won’t go in to because they were bad enough to experience first hand, let alone describe, but they have resulted in nothing more substantive than a few cream crackers and numerous glasses of water passing my lips since Thursday evening. Oh, and one cup of tea and an English muffin this morning that I’m not sure was the wisest move. Great for dropping a few pounds maybe, not the best for mental clarity or physical stamina. You would not believe how long it has taken me to write these few coherent sentences…

So I want to you take this Toast (just the thought of a roast right now is making me queasy…) as a sign that I do adore of all you, my blog-reading and commenting lovelies. It won’t be the best ever, or the longest, but I have missed you these past couple of weeks (thanks to Neko and Moose for looking after things and doing some great Roasts of their own) and didn’t want to keep you hanging around any longer for a genuine Cas post.

Because we (me especially) could do with a laugh, here’s a new web-comic that’s been catching my eye on and off lately – Rusty Fork.

Oh how I wish I had the mental thing-y-ness to write a coherent intro to this link right now, but I don’t. I’ve been slurring sentences, making up words, and just plain resorting to mime at times lately to get my meaning across (hand wave, gesture, frantic scribble, handwave, nod head, shake head, grimace, sigh Moose eventually managed to translate to “oh, you want to sign the tenancy agreement now?”). Take pity on me and go read how danah lost control of Facebook.

Not sexy, not funny, but useful: manual Gantt charting in Excel.

I have no idea how I stumbled across this site, but I’ve been an awed subscriber since before I got an RSS reader (so several years at least) – these gardens are just so gloriously beautiful.

Read and write on the screen, or resort to paper? Here’s how the greats do it. For the curious, here’s how I do it (an amalgam of laptop, notebooks, moleskines and lots of kit-kats).

Moose linked to The Nines movie trailer last week. This week it’s my turn to link to the audio commentary.

For the curious, the pictures from my recent trip to Guernsey. I didn’t take that many, being one of those people who prefers to look at the world as a whole, rather than just through a viewfinder, but I did take a couple of nice shots 🙂

And that’s it. I am now off to collapse on the sofa and watch either the rest of Back to the Future II, or more Firefly, depending on who wins the battle for the remote.